Page 29 - CCCA62_2007

CCCA62_040-044.qxd:CCCA_V1No1_DriversSeat-FIN.qxd 09/14/2007 04:04 PM Page 40 Feature Online in-house making the case for the corporate counsel blogger et’s have a show of hands – are you an in-house counsel Unlike static websites, which change little from the day they who blogs? Observe that one lonely hand rising over the are created, blogs are constantly updated.This frequent activity Lnation, the hand of Dominic Jaar in Montreal who is, by gets priority on search engines such as Google.For instance,type his own admission, a rare breed. in the key words “Canada law paperless files” and Jaar’s blog will Jaar,a commercial litigator with Bell Canada,is quite likely the pop up near the top of more than 300,000 websites. only in-house counsel in Canada with a blog. With this level of exposure, Jaar has built a go-to reputation in “I am not aware of another in-house lawyer blogger, and if just two years that usually takes decades to achieve. He is invit- there is one, please tell me,” laughs Jaar. “I would contact him ed to speak at conferences and discuss issues with lawyers and right away and invite him for lunch,or have a beer together when judges who are interested in technology and the law. I pass through her city.” “I have built relationships with people I never would have met Jaar created his bilingual blog, Wines and Information otherwise,” he says. “As a young lawyer, there is no chance with- Management,in July 2006 to write about technology and the in- out my blog that a judge would have called or e-mailed to say house practice of law, including topics such as paperless files, he wants to discuss a topic with me.” e-discovery and collaborativeWeb communication —– and occa- While many lawyers take pride in penning articles for maga- sionally, wine. zines and journals, Jaar strategically bypassed what he calls “old- He was already contributing to the collaborative legal blog fashioned” media and went straight to the web. slaw.ca when a colleague challenged him to start a blog of “Everything is happening pretty quickly in technology right his own. now. If you think it’s going to take you three months to draft a “I said, if that’s a dare, I’ll do it,” he recalls.“I started blogging good article, by the time it’s published the information you want and I never stopped.” to share is probably already outdated,” he says. “It’s a lot easier to A blog (short for weblog, also known as a blawg in legal cir- do small posts on different topics as they fly by, rather than draft- cles) is an interactive website based on the format of a daily jour- ing deeper articles that might be outdated within months.” nal, in which the author posts entries and readers respond with their questions or comments. Blogs are easy to create, require no Potential conflicts special computer expertise, and instantly span the globe. Although Jaar writes about technology as it relates to his job, he 40 CCCA Canadian Corporate Counsel Association FALL 2007